Disposable diapers have become increasingly popular in recent years and have incorporated many features which enhance both comfort and function. Elastic leg diapers have become popular because the use of elastic around the legs of a baby tend to prevent urine and feces leakage in that area.
Babies, and particularly young infants, often have extremely loose explosive bowel movements which while substantially contained at the edge due to the force and volume, as well as the liquidity of consistency can run over both the front and back portions of the waist of the diaper. The introduction of elastic in the waist area will generally inhibit the leakage over the ends of the diaper, however, due to the necessity for maintaining the comfort of the baby elastic which is designed to fit more loosely is used. The gathers in the diaper liner formed by the elastic can, because of the loose fit when compared to the legs, provide channels for fecal escape.
The concept of utilizing waist elastic is disclosed e.g. in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,990,450 and 3,951,150 in the rather complicated constructions depicted in these two patents, the constringent elastic means are attached in a bow-shaped extended FIG. 8 configuration and a flap is formed by folding over the extended waist ends of the diaper. U.S. Pat. No. 3,930,501, while not disclosing an elasticized waist also has a flap at the ends of the diaper forming the waist portion. In each of these prior art patents the flap is formed by folding the extended ends of the diaper which would conventionally form the waist portion over on itself so that the nonporous fluid impermeable baffle produces a non-porous plastic surface in contact with the baby's waist area. This will quite obviously produce discomfort in the form of abrasive chafing or moisture derived skin irritation.